Princess Palace

26 August 2026

A Steady Princess in the Heart of Tempests

Edition Moos, Karlsruhe Nr. 3640

via Wikimedia Commons

Theodora's life had always been unstable, riddled with upheavals and tragedies. She had lived through the Balkan Wars and the First World War. She had sheltered in the cellars with her mother and sisters when the French had bombarded the royal palace in Athens. Her family had been forced into exile not once, but twice. Her grandfather had been assassinated when she was just five years old. Her father had narrowly escaped a death sentence for treason when she was a teenager. Her beloved mother had been sent to a sanatorium after claiming she was married to Jesus.

This wasn't even the first time an entire branch of her family tree had been obliterated in a moment. When she was still a girl, her mother's cousin Alexandra had been brutally murdered with her husband and all of their children, the youngest just two years older than Theodora herself. The next day, Alexandra's sister met the same fate.

But this family annihilation was worse. Maybe it wasn't as brutal. It wasn't intentional. It wasn't political. It was an accident. But that was not the worst part yet. This time, it was Cecilie. Her little sister. Her playmate. Of the four daughters of Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Princess Cecile was the one who sparkled, whose bright personality found a way to shine despite all of the hardships they faced, while Princess Theodora was the quieter one, who stood back and tried to help keep everyone together.

Theodora was at home at her husband's ancestral castle, Salem, in Germany on that cold, cloudy November day when the news was delivered by telegram. Twenty-six-year-old Cecilie, her unborn child, her two little boys, her husband, her mother-in-law and their pilot all killed in an instant when their plane inexplicably crashed.

In that terrible moment, perhaps Theodora thought back to those glorious but stressful days when she and her sisters, the exiled Princesses of Greece, had made their debut in London society as the penniless relatives of the British Royal Family. (Their mother, after all, had been born at Windsor Castle under the eye of her grandmother Queen Victoria.) The girls and their baby brother, Prince Philip, who was 15 years younger than Theodora, bounced between a quasi-stable existence in France to "visit" various relatives from Romania to Britain to Germany, where their mother was ultimately confined.

Princess Alice with her four daughters

from the Royal Collection via Wikimedia Commons

And, it was in Germany, that all four sisters found their husbands. The two youngest married first: Sophie to Prince Christoph of Hesse in 1930 when she was only 16 and Cecilie a few months later to Christoph's cousin Hereditary Grand Duke Georg Donatus of Hesse. Two months later, oldest sister Margarita, age 26, Hereditary Prince Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.

A month after that, Theodora was the last to marry when she wed Berthold Margrave of Baden, and moved into Schloss Salem. Within six years, the couple had three children: Margarita, Max, and little Ludwig, born just eight months before the Hessian plane crash. Ever dutiful, Theodora continued to maintain strong ties of her family. She traveled frequently to visit her mother at the sanatorium. With their mother institutionalized and their father living a playboy lifestyle in Paris, it was Theodora who invited their baby brother Philip a home with her growing family as Schloss Salem.

Theodora and Berthold were patrons of Philip's first school there, Salem School, which had been co-founded by Berthold's father and Jewish-German educator Kurt Hahn. With the Nazis' rise to power, Hahn relocated to Gordonstoun and Philip followed him there, while Berthold maintained the school at Salem. While her brothers-in-law voluntarily joined the Nazi party, Theodora's husband was less enthusiastic about the new regime. When war came, he did his aristocratic duty serving as a cavalry officer. He was injured early in the war and returned home to Theodora and the children. Theodora spent the war volunteering with the Red Cross and helping Berthold run their estates and raise their children.

The rest of her family was flung across the Europe. Philip, now grown was actively serving in the British Navy, actively fighting against her surviving brothers-in-law in the German army. Their father was on the French Riviera, while their mother, having returned to stable mental health was living a nunlike existence in Greece, where she was risking her life to protect Jewish people from the advancing armies.

Berthold was able to maintain the school's independence, but he could not fully protect it nor all of his domains from Nazi control. The school's main operations were closed in 1941, and the Nazis used the castle grounds as a forced labor camp for Polish prisoners. With the defeat of the Nazis, the French occupied the area and forced the remaining school program to be closed due to the Nazi influence. Before the end of the year, the French occupiers had been convinced of the school's true intent. In November 1945. Schule Schloss Salem was reopened under the original educational philosophies instituted by Kurt Hahn and Berthold's father. It continues to operate today. In addition to the school in Gordonstoun, Hahn went on to found Outward Bound and United World Colleges, which has been attended by many of the 21st Century's young royals.

by Philip de László via Wikimedia Commons

Although the turbulence of the war had subsided and normalcy eventually returned to Salem, Theodora's family heartaches continued to arrive at regular intervals. First, she lost her father not long before the war ended, not having seen him for years. Then, in 1947, the joy of Philip's wedding to the future Queen of the United Kingdom was denied to the sisters and their families. Despite a close bond between the prince and his sisters, the specter of the war with Germany was still too fresh to allow them to join him and his bride in the Abbey. Saddened and depressed and by then suffering from heart problems, Theodora was able to gather with her sisters and other univited relatives for their own celebration. They later received detailed written descriptions from their mother and from their cousin, Princess Marina of Greece, who had married the bride's uncle, Prince George Duke of Kent. Within a few years, things had settled enough for Theodora to be invited to the coronation when Philip's bride was crowned Queen Elizabeth II.

In the meantime, the restoration of the Greek monarchy under her cousin King Paul led to many invitations to royal occasions in her birth country. As her children grew into adulthood, the Badens' popularity across the royal families of Europe led to even more invitations that eventually yielded stronger family connections: their daughter Margarita married Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia in 1957 while their oldest son Max married Archduchess Valerie of Austria in 1966. A year later, the youngest son Ludwig married Princess Marianne of Auersperg-Breunner.

Sadly, Berthold did not get to witness their sons' marriages. Theodora had lost him quite suddenly in 1963 when he died while driving home with Ludwig. Without Berthold at her side, Theodora withdrew more from public life, remaining at Salem. She often struggled to speak or to walk. Her ongoing heart issues were exacerbated by seizures. She survived him only by six years. Her death at age 63 at least spared her one final tragic loss: she was never orphaned as her mother Princess Alice lived on for another eight months after her.

Theodora and Berthold on their wedding day
via Wikimedia Commons

The strong familial connections that Theodora always fought to maintain despite the turmoil of her life also survived her. More than 50 years later, when her brother Philip died shortly before his 100th birthday, the ongoing Covid restrictions of the time severely limited the number of people allowed at the funeral. Only three people were invited to represent his birth family. One of them was Theodora's grandson, Hereditary Prince Bernhard of Baden

More About Theodora
Baden-Greece Nuptials on Royal Musings
The Badens on Royal Musings
Funeral of Princess Theodora, Margravine of Baden on The Royal Watcher
Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark on Alchetron
Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark Explained on Everything Explained Today
Princess Theodora of Greece, Margravine of Baden on Unofficial Royalty
Princess Theodora, Margravine of Baden on The Royal Watcher
Theodora of Greece & Denmark--A Princess without a Fortune on History of Royal Women
Wedding of the Margrave of Baden and Princess Theodora on The Royal Watcher

17 August 2026

A Matriarch without Descendants

By William Beechey via Wikimedia Commons

If fate had been kinder to her, Queen Adelaide might be the 19th Century royal matriarch we remember today instead of Victoria. Her daughter might have been Queen Elizabeth II and the entire line of Windsors might never have existed. Alas, tragedy launched a different trajectory for the pale young woman from Meinengen who married a future king more than twice her age.

In fact, tragedy seems to have often guided the course of Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen's life. When she was just 11, a fever carried away her father, but his death placed her mother in the role of regent and taught her that women could be leaders. At 25, the tragic death in childbirth of King George III's only legitimate grandchild and her infant (read my post A Double Royal Tragedy), brought the penniless Duke of Clarence to her doorstep looking for a fertile wife. And, alas the tragic death of her only living child left her without a dynastic role in history.

But, in 1818, her potential for motherhood made her a bridal candidate for Prince William Duke of Clarence. As the third of George III's nine sons, William had felt far enough from the crown to eschew matrimony for decades. Instead, he set up house with an actress and produced 10 rowdy but well-loved children before casting her aside in 1811. (Read my post on Dorothy Jordan.) His navy career was hardly lucrative enough to pay for so many offspring or so many parties and, in the way of Hanoverian princes, William built up quite a bit of debt. The death of his niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, opened the door of opportunity. To get more money from Parliament all he and his younger brothers had to do was find a suitable bride. He and brother number 4, Edward Duke of Kent, found their new wives and saved some cash by having a double wedding.

William married Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen while Edward married the widowed Victoria of Saxe-Coburg on July 11, 1818 in their mother's drawing room at Kew Palace. Then, both couples raced off to Hanover, where they could live less expensively, to try to beget heirs.

In addition to becoming a royal duchess of Clarence, 25-year-old Adelaide became a stepmother to William's brood, who went by the surname Fitzclarence. They ranged in age from 11 to 24. The always kind Adelaide accepted her husband's illegitmate children (and the grandchildren who started arriving in 1820 with the first one named Adelaide!) and welcomed them with warmth. Still, she hoped for a child of her own and those hope were well-founded when she fell pregnant just a few months after the wedding. Late in the pregnancy, however, Adelaide became ill with pleuriscy and delivered a little princess two months early in March 1819. They named her Charlotte but she died within a few hours. Two months later, Edward and Victoria's own daughter, Victoria, was born.

Within a few months, Adelaide had recovered enough to become pregnant again. This time, William decided to use a ploy Edward and Victoria had used back in the spring: he would rush his pregnant wife to England so the potential could be born on English soil. Alas, the journey did not go as planned and Adelaide miscarried her second pregnancy before they crossed the English Channel. The saddened couple continued on to London and took up residence in Clarence House at St. James's Palace. Their daughter Princess Elizabeth Georgiana Adelaide was born there on December 10, 1820. The infant princess was third in line to the throne after her childless uncle Frederick Duke of York and her father.

Adelaide rejoiced in her baby daughter. Like her older sister, Elizabeth was born prematurely, causing her parents to christen her on the day she was born. However, it was quickly clear that Elizabeth was stronger. She seemed a picture of health throughout that wet, cold winter toward the end of a period we now call "the little ice age." As March roared in with more intemperate weather, Elizabeth remained well until suddenly she was not. But it was not the weather that carried her away. On March 1, the baby began to suffer convulsions and high fever. The doctors could do nothing to save her from a strangulated bowel or intussusception.

Sculpture by William Scoular, photo by James Calford via Wikimedia Commons

Once again, a healthy young heir had been tragically ripped away from the Hanoverian dynasty. William and Adelaide were devastated. They immediately commissioned a death mask and a memorial sculpture of their daughter in her cradle. They kept the sculpture always near them and Adelaide eventually willed it to their niece, Queen Victoria, to have it permanently displayed at Windsor Castle.

The couple tried once again to give the nation an heir. By the end of the year, Adelaide was pregnant once again. As with her earlier pregnancies, she went into labor early. At about 30 weeks, she was delivered of stillborn twin boys. It was her last recorded pregnancy. She was 29 years old.

Adelaide continued to focus on her husband and his family and, when she was permitted by the widowed Duchess of Kent, on their niece Princess Victoria, who was in blooming health. Adelaide was renowned for her charity and her gentleness. Many were impressed with how she had tamed the garrulous and somewhat rude-mannered Duke of Clarence. He seemed to become a calmer, kinder person thanks to her influence. Of course, she could not prevent all of his outbursts.

The couple was particularly troubled by the Duchess of Kent. Adelaide had sought to befriend her and the young Princess Victoria, assuring the Dowager Duchess of her true affection. "My children are dead," she wrote to her sister-in-law with whom she had shared a wedding, "but your child lives and she is mine, too."

Tensions only continued to grow after William became King William IV in 1830. By this time, Victoria was entering adolescence and the King and Queen Adelaide longed to have her with them more often. The Duchess of Kent, however, jealously guarded her daughter seeking both to physically protect her and to ensure her own control over the future monarch. At his 71st birthday party, when the Duchess had offered just one too many signs of disrespect to the King--including taking over 17 rooms at Kensington Palace that the King had denied her, William roared within everyone's hearing that he hoped he would live until Victoria was at least 18. "I should then have the satisfactin of leaving the royal authority to the personal exercise of theat young lady, the heiress presumptive to the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the situation in which she is now placed."

Princess Victoria burst into tears. The Duchess received the rebuke in stony silence. Adelaide was absolutely mortified but maintained her composure as Queen and hostess with more than 100 guests in attendance. She also continued thereafter to provide little respites for young Victoria from the strict confines of her mother. Adelaide called Victoria "my dear little heart". She consistently invited her to court and made her comfortable when she was allowed to come. She also created an environment where Victoria did not have to feel torn between her mother and her aunt.

The following year, William's lifestyle caught up to him. The combined impact of heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver, and pneumonia dogged his final weeks. He struggled to remain alive to fulfill his vengeance against the Duchess of Kent. Queen Adelaide stayed ever vigilant by his side, nursing him an comforting him, refusing to rest for the final 10 days and welcoming his children to keep vigil with her. He died less than a month after Victoria's 18th birthday. Although heartbroken and exhausted, Adelaide immediately wrote to the new Queen, assuring her of her "most affectionate devotion" and signing herself as "your Majesty's most affectionate Friend, Aunt, and Subject."

Queen Victoria repaid Adelaide's kindness immediately. As the first Queen Dowager in more than a century and because she was not the mother of the new monarch, Adelaide might easily have been denied the perquisites of her station. Instead, Victoria showered her with affection, even embracing her at her coronation. She let Adelaide take any personal mementos she wanted fromthe King's estate, gave her an income of £100,000 per year, and let her stay at Windsor Castle, where her daughter Elizabeth was buried, whenever she wished. A few years later, when Victoria's first child was born, she christened her Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa and asked Queen Adelaide to stand as godmother.

During her widowhood, Adelaide continued to act as materfamilias to the ever-growing Fitzclarence family. She regularly welcomed them to her home at Bushy Park, where she served as Ranger of Bushy Park, a position her husband had granted her in the first year of his reign. She also traveled frequently. She returned to her German homeland and also went to warmer climates like Madeira, Malta, and Gibraltar in service to her chronically worsening health. Wherever she went, she is known to have supported churches, hospitals, and the poor.

Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert, whose own mother had been banished from his life when he was very young and died when he was still a child, also embraced Queen Adelaide's maternal spirit as well as her sterling moral reputation. When she died in 1849 at age 57, Albert served as chief mourner joined by the seven surviving Fitzclarences and their offspring. Victoria writing that it was a "great and irreparable loss to both of us."

In addition to bequests to the Queen, including some jewels still in use by royal ladies today, she left cash, jewels, and family treasures to the Fitzclarence grandchildren, several of whom had been named Adelaide in honor of her.

Although she insisted on a quiet and unassuming funeral in keeping with her character and personality, her most famous namesake has her relaxed vibe but also knows how to throw a great festival. Adelaide, Australia was named in her honor in 1836 while King William was still alive. Queen Victoria's second son Prince Alfred was the first royal to visit Adelaide in 1867.

In 2026, Victoria's great-great-great granddaughter, Princess Eugenie, named her daughter Adelaide, reviving a royal name that had reigned two centuries ago.

12 July 2026

A Queen Who Truly Changed a Kingdom

via Wikimedia Commons

The church was silent. The streets of Munich were empty. The woman in the coffin had helped create the city as center for art and beauty, but her religion had always been a problem.When the Protestant Princess Caroline of Baden became the second wife of the soon-to-be King Maxilimilian I Joseph of Bavaria, she was not forced to adopt her new homeland's Catholicism. She was even allowed to keep her Protestant clergyman. But, on this gray November day in 1841, her clergy were forbidden to enter the Theatine Church and required to hand over their beloved Queen to the Catholic priests. By order of the archbishop, the priests wore no robes or finery. Dressed only in their street clothes, they led the coffin into the church. Then, without music or fanfare or blessings, they lowered her into the crypt.

Caroline had arrived in Munich as a lovely young bride 44 years earlier in the midst of the Napoleanic turmoil. In fact, she met her a husband, a widower 20 years her senior when he fled to her father's territory to avoid Napolean's rampaging armies. It might not have been the preferred match for the young woman who is said to have fallen in love with the French Bourbon Prince Louis Antoine Duke of Enghien, who had also sought refuge in Baden. But a French match had been deemed too unstable given the recent revolution and rise of the Republic. Better to marry her to Maximilian, who had fallen deeply in love with her, and send her to Bavaria, where she could help to raise the four surviving children from his first marriage, the oldest of whom, Prince Ludwig, was only 10 years younger than Caroline.

Accompanied by her twin sister Amalie, she left behind a close and happy family, but she would soon fill Maximilian Joseph's castle with a family of their own. Tragically, her first pregnancy ended in stillbirth and her second baby died before his third birthday, but two sets of healthy twin girls quickly arrived followed by two more princesses to complete the family. Tragedy again, however, when the youngest Princess Maximiliana contracted typhus and died at age 10.

By then, however, Maximilian Joseph and Caroline had grown into a loving couple and devoted parents. Caroline had gained the admiration of her stepchildren though the relationship with Prince Ludwig was never ideal. The nation was also stable. King Maxilimilian I Joseph had achieved this through a careful relationship with Napolean, which enabled him to obtain and retain his crown. The favor was so strong that Napolean even supported the marriage of his stepson Eugene de Beauharnais to Maximilian Joseph's oldest daughter, Princess Augusta. Caroline initially opposed the marriage, but relented when she learned that the couple loved each other.

Caroline and Maximilian Joseph with their daughters
By August von Heckel in the Bavarian National Museum via Wikimedia Commons

In fact, all of the daughters married well and several raised historically significant families. Among the grandchildren were: Emperor Franz Joseph II of Austria and his wife Empress Elisabeth, Queen Josephine of Sweden, Empress Amelie of Brazil, Prince Consort August of Brazil, Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, and Queen Marie Sophie of the Two Sicilies.

With their mixed religious marriage and their joint love of arts and culture, Caroline and Maximilian Joseph transformed Bavaria and its capitol Munich, in particular. Having emancipated the Protestants, perhaps influenced by the Lutheran Caroline, Maximilian Joseph also nationalized many of the treasures of the Catholic Church--which almost certainly led to the Catholic priests' disrespect at her funeral. They founded the Academy of Fine Arts and the National Theater, while also re-designing the city of Munich as a planned city around four royal boulevards with several squares, including one named for Caroline.

The unexpected death of Maximilian Joseph in his sleep after a family celebration of his name day in 1825 was a terrible blow to Caroline. Not only had she lost a devoted husband and staunch supporter, but her stepson, the new King Ludwig I sought to minimize her popular influence. Ludwig respected Caroline but he did not trust her Protestantism or anti-French tendencies. As he grew more ambitious, he became more volatile and impulsive (characteristics that would eventually lead to scandal and abdication).

In an effort to decrease Caroline's popularity and impact, he forced her to live outside of Munich. At first, the staunchly Catholic Ludwig tried to separate her Lutheran chaplain from her, but Caroline successfully pushed back. He even denied her the status of a Queen Dowager.

During her 16 years as a widow, Caroline remained steadfast and kind despite Ludwig's public coldness. She remained devoted to her growing family. In her final public moment--that unmerciful funeral--she enabled one more act of grace in a life that had been filled with them. King Ludwig was horrified by the outcome of his treatment of his stepmother, who had cared for him when she was little more than a girl herself. The indignity of her funeral led him to relent and become a defender of Protestant rights and a critic of extemism.

More about Caroline
Birth of Princess Caroline of Baden on European Royal History
Caroline of Baden -- Franz Josef and Sissi's Grandmother Part One on History of Royal Women
Caroline of Baden -- Franz Josef and Sissi's Grandmother Part Two on History of Royal Women
Caroline of Baden, Queen of Bavaria on Unofficial Royalty
The Daughters of the Hereditary Prince of Baden on Crowns, Tiaras, & Coronets
The First Bavarian Queen, Caroline of Baden on Arrayed in Gold
Queen Caroline of Bavaria, Royal Stepmother and Mother on Arrayed in Gold
Sweet Caroline of Baden, The First Queen of Bavaria on Paul's Talk Travel Blog